Running Late
by Larie-chan
Summary: [Oneshot, AU] Misao is late...again. And she just can't et her ADD down when a certain blue eyed man dominates her thoughts.


**A/N:** Yes! I finally got aroud to a one shot. whooooo! Enjoy.

**Disclaimer**-Okay,deep breath and...I do not own: Ruroni Kenshin or anything related to such, Destiny's Child, South Dakota, Wild Berry Poptarts, a quote from 'Two Towers" that I'm preety sure I mudilated, OR pajama pants with Chinese takeout boxes on them...ON WITH THE STORY.

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Strong. Ambitious. Divinely beautiful. That's what the people call her. But it wasn't always so. No! They use to scoff at her, saying that a submarine with an all-women crew was insane, nay scandalous! But she took their words and shoved them…somewhere else. And here she was, Captain Makimachi of the first ranked corporal nuclear diesel submarine, with a crew of all females! 

"Take _that_ you chauvinistic politicians! Bwahahahah!"

Misao's feminine crew stopped their activities and stared at their beloved captain, who was at the moment laughing her pretty head off at something they did not understand. Misao abruptly stopped her insane giggles and threw each person a smoldering glare that promptly set them back into work. She snickered at the low hum they were making in the spacious main room; all her crew respected and feared her, and would always look up to their captain, figuratively _and_ literally.

"Oh, ah, m-miss Misao, I mean Divinely Beautiful Captain Makimachi!"

Misao snapped out of her musings upon hearing one of her many titles. Whipping her head around to look at the addressing girl, Misao only saw air. Smiling dashingly at her silly mistake, Misao tilted her head down to look at the smaller girl.

"Yes?"

"Well, I, ah, have a very urgent message for you ma'am."

Misao nodded curtly for her to continue.

"Um, you see, there's this other captain that wished to board-."

"Nonsense! Don't you know the rules girl? No man is to ever come abroad this ship! Ever! Why if that happened we would just be telling the world that we women still need help from men! I will _never_ allow such a thing to happen to _my_ ship while I'm around! We must be strong girls! Our resolution must be like a rock!" All of the crew once again stopped their work and applauded their captain's rousing monologue.

Once the crew had gotten back to their work Misao smirked. Yes, she would always have her resolution.

"But ma'am, it's Captain Shinomori that wants to broad!"

Ladies and gentlemen Misao's resolution has just left the building. Her eyes went wide at the news and she stared down at the fidgeting girl.

"You mean Aosh-Captain Shinomori wants to board!"

The girl bobbed her head rapidly as conformation.

"Well, heck yeah, bring him on!"

"But ma'am, he's already here."

"_What_!"

Before Misao could wrap her fingers around the girl's neck and strangling her for not telling her sooner, the messenger scampered away and the doors opened to reveal none other than Aoshi Shinomori himself.

One has to praise the strength of Misao's knees at that moment for not leaving the girl in a twittering puddle at the suave captain's feet, but Misao wasn't in a much better state then that. Although she did manage to hold her mouth closed as the Aoshi walked, or rather sauntered, over to her. Soon the ice-eyed man was towering over her, and Misao was trying very desperately not to start drooling rivers on his well polished shoes. Who knew that military issued uniforms could look so dang good?

"Captain Makimachi." A professional and curt greeting that required another from Misao.

Unfortunately, Misao's main bodily functions, such as speaking or even breathing, had decided to hightail it out of there and join her resolution for wacky adventures in South Dakota. So she just smiled and giggled weakly.

Again one must praise Aoshi for either not noticing Misao's current idiotic state or being very gentlemanly and overlooking her lack of comprehensible responses, for he simply kept talking.

"Captain, - do you mind me calling you Misao?"

A giggle/sigh was the reply.

"Misao, I have come here to bring you urgent news. You see Misao; during the times I have spent with you I have discovered something. You see darling-."

Misao's eyes widened to abnormal proportions. Dear mother of all things, good, simple, and holy; did he just call her 'darling'!

"Darling, I-."

The left side of Misao's face began to twitch in anticipation.

"Darling, I, I- will be partly cloudy with a forty percent chance of rain."

"…say wha-?"

"And that's all for today's weather and now for the smashin' sounds of Destiny's Child!"

The twitch was still there, but now it was because of the horrid realization that Aoshi was now in the middle of the room, dancing, surrounded by her crew members who were now dressed in leopard tights and holding feathered boas, and singing in the top of his lungs in a creepily feminine voice. And the fun just began there folks! As Aoshi was holding out the last note of the song, one of the crew members turned around and started to beat Misao with a pillow…

"MISAO! Wake up!"

Misao moaned and groaned in a way that Frankenstein would be proud of as she feebly tried to block the fluffy beatings she was getting.

"Misao, your alarm's been going off for like five minutes! Get up!"

The sleepy girl finally sat up in her bed and was greeted with the sight of her long friend and roommate, Kaoru Kamiya, glaring at her.

"Hey, good morning to you too." Misao mumbled.

"A good morning! I can never have a good morning with your alarm blaring non-stop!"

Kaoru glared one last time before leaving the room as Misao yawned in a blatant way showing that she was now ignoring her. Lifting her arms overhead in a stretch, Misao smiled calmly. She had a gut feeling that today was going to be a good day.

Until she saw the time that is.

With a startled yelp she sprung off the bed, only to find that her legs were still tangled in the sheets and she had now face planted herself on the floor. Rolling onto her back with an annoyed grunt she started kicking her legs in an attempt to free herself; and after finding that that was only making things worse, Misao began to wiggle her legs furiously out of their cocoon, and in the process completely ripping one sheet off the bed and even moving the mattress off its frame.

Finally freed, she rushed over to her dresser and pulled open the first drawer her hands reached and pulled out a long sleeved lime green shirt.

_I wonder if Aoshi likes green... FOCUS!_

After her brief lasp in progress she nearly ripped off her shirt so she could dress. Raising her arms to put the shirt on she inhaled deeply.

_Oh, not good._

She needed a shower, badly. Pulling the lime shirt over her head, Misao ran to the door, but stopped suddenly.

_Wait, I need time to take a shower. I don't have time. Okay, okay, okay, okay. What do I do, what do I do? I smell bad; I need to not smell bad. What, besides soap, smells good? My soap smells like flowers; what else smells like flowers? Flowers, flowers, that's it! Perfume smells like flowers and that equals good!_

Misao turned on her heel and started to rush to the other side of the room, but once again stopped.

_Wait, just perfume? Is that tacky? _

She was equaled distant from both the doorway and where her perfumes laid, nervous and twitchy as a greyhound before the starting shot of the race. Her mind was trying very hard to choose logically.

_Okay, let's see. Shower: ten minutes tops. Perfume: five seconds tops. Perfume wins._

Misao again kicked back into warp speed mode and dived for the perfumes. Not really caring what she smelled like, as long as it was a different scent then what she was now, she grabbed the first bottle that she saw: Peach Passion. Then the spraying began. One spray under each arm, one on the front of her shirt, one on the back, and one n her hair lest that held a stench.

Completely satisfied that she now smelled a whole deal better Misao now ran to the bathroom to finish her preparations.

Sprinting across the hallway and into the absurdly small bathroom, Misao's foot stepped on the rug at such an angle that, combined with Misao's speed and the slickness of the floor, sent her flying. Doing a mid air twist that would have made any karate master proud Misao somehow ended up holding the door frame with kneeling like a man proposing. Biting back very loud curses Misao pulled herself back up and turned to the sink. No matter how ridiculously late Misao was running she would always thoroughly brush her teeth.

Morning breath and a talkative Misao are not a good combo.

Pushing out the aqua striped paste on a well used toothbrush, Misao allowed her mind to wander to her earlier dream. Now that she thought about it every single crew member she had was shorter than her, but Aoshi was his usual height compared with her. Then that means that either Aoshi had grown to be about eight feet tall, or Misao had manned her sub with circus midgets. Not that she really cared if Aoshi was eight foot something mind you; heck, he could be four inches tall for all she cared just as long as he was in a uniform. Because boy howdy, was he a fine piece of work then! Completely drool-worthy in anything that just so happened to fit snuggly around his chest…

Misao snapped from her mental picture to find that she had indeed started to drool; and now the white foamy froth that was her toothpaste had somehow found a way out of her mouth, down her chin, and down her shirt to form a straight line.

There is no curse in the language of men, orcs, or elves to describe how Misao felt at the moment.

_Well, it does kinda look like it's supposed to be there._

After her customary rinse and spit, and grabbing a pair of flip-flops from her room, Misao bounded down the hallway. Slowing down her pace to that of a comfortable jog, Misao entered the kitchen ignoring Kaoru, hell-bent on finding something quick and easy to eat. Rejoicing at the discovery of Wild Berry Poptarts, Misao tore the rectangles from their wrappers in seven seconds flat. Of course that meant that now the box was thrown across the room and one of the tarts broken. But they had still made it into the microwave.

Watching her breakfast spin slowly around, Misao noticed something about them.

_Huh, they have blue icing. Like Aoshi's eyes…_

"I wonder if Aoshi tastes like wild berry."

Misao slapped her hands over her mouth and timidly glanced over to Kaoru. Thankfully she hadn't noticed anything apart from the newspaper she was reading or the toast she was nibbling on.

The microwave hadn't finished its insistent beeping before Misao had already plucked her food from it. Momentarily juggling the hot pastries Misao pooped them into her mouth, ignoring the searing hot berry-like filling. A brief minute of silence followed before Kaoru broke it.

"Hey, Misao. It says here that it's going to be cloudy today-."

"Yeah, Aoshi told me."

Kaoru stopped mid-sentence and gave Misao a quizzical look from over her paper. Misao just stared back, slightly mortified, before popping the last bit of the Poptart into her mouth and shuffling out of the kitchen.

Soon Misao was out of the apartment building and jogging down to the bus stop. She never stopped her jog until she was at the bus stop and actually speed up when she saw that the bus was leaving. Climbing into the bus slightly flushed and huffing, her mood immediately rose a tiny bit. Even though the bus was crowded, there was one seat entirely void of anyone. Sighing a contented sigh, she sat down an allowed herself to finally slow down.

No matter how late she was running, Misao would never miss her class. I wasn't that she loved the subject mind you, (who'd love Naval History?) it was rather that she liked her classsmates, or moe persicely class_mate. _She remembered how she had to nearlt beat other girls away from the only seat next to him, she of course won and ended up sitting next to him as he sat next to the window. Misao never really understood why Aoshi liked to sit near the window anyway...

Closing her eyes, she let her head drop down so that her chin rested on her chest; but after a sudden bump she open her eyes.

_I don't remember getting pants with Chinese takeout boxes on them…_

Realization reared its ugly head and slapped her across the face. She did own pants like that, but they were only to sleep in.

Suddenly Misao wanted to cry.

For a few minutes longer Misao uncharacteristically kept her mouth shut and tried to cover her legs with her book bag. Avoiding any eye contact whatsoever she prayed solemnly that here would be no other people getting on the bus. But her prayers went unanswered when the bus jerked to a stop. As the lone passenger boarded Misao bit her lip and looked out of the grimy window, knowing full well that the seat beside her was one of the only vacant ones. After a moment a calm, cool, and at that moment horribly familiar voice broke her thoughts.

"May I sit here?"

Misao turned her head around and found herself staring into the glacier eyes of Aoshi Shinomori; icy-blue eyes that didn't even glance at her pajama pants or the toothpaste stain on her shirt but looked directly into her own wide eyes

"Yeah, sure." Her reply was surprisingly calm compared to what her heart was doing at the moment. And Aoshi sat. Next to her. Without being threatened first. Misao bore holes into the seat in front of her with the intensity of her stare, blinking slightly.

Maybe today would be a good day after all.

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**A/N:** Okay, it's done. So what did you think? "Laughed so hard I fell off my chair", "It's okay for a first try", OR "Don't EVER disgrace the selection of humor AGAIN!"? Thanks for reading! 


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